


We Won, They Never Said What We Lost (But We Didn't Lose Him)

by GuiltyPleasuresAndDeadlySins



Series: This Shouldn't Work, But Somehow It Does [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Fix-It, Other, Spoilers, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-19
Updated: 2012-05-19
Packaged: 2017-11-05 15:32:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/408060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuiltyPleasuresAndDeadlySins/pseuds/GuiltyPleasuresAndDeadlySins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This started because I had an image of Clint bursting into a hospital room where both his lovers are, one with her head pillowed on the bed Coulson’s lying on.  Because ‘Tasha’s part of the final battle, it couldn’t be her, so OC Tyler came in (although I’ve been playing with pairing her with Coulson for a while now), and this was born.</p>
<p>The title is obviously taken from Steve's line to Fury in the gym.</p>
<p>I own nothing...unfortunately :(</p>
    </blockquote>





	We Won, They Never Said What We Lost (But We Didn't Lose Him)

**Author's Note:**

> This started because I had an image of Clint bursting into a hospital room where both his lovers are, one with her head pillowed on the bed Coulson’s lying on. Because ‘Tasha’s part of the final battle, it couldn’t be her, so OC Tyler came in (although I’ve been playing with pairing her with Coulson for a while now), and this was born.
> 
> The title is obviously taken from Steve's line to Fury in the gym.
> 
> I own nothing...unfortunately :(

When Clint found out Coulson was still alive, he didn’t actually punch anyone out until three weeks later, and even then, it wasn’t Coulson, but their wife, who was perfectly happy to slug him back and damn near break his jaw for assuming that she’d had half a second to spare to try and tell Clint that their husband was still alive.

Clint first realizes something is wrong with the statement that Coulson is dead when Tyler is not sat with him like ‘Tasha is, waiting for him to become himself again.

The second time he realizes something is wrong, is when she’s not stood on the landing strip of the helicarrier with a jet already lined up for them.

The third time, is when they return from battle, with Loki, and Tyler still hasn’t made an appearance demanding retribution – painful and bloody, and extracted by her own teeth and fingernails if necessary.

The fourth time is when they’re sending Loki off, and ‘Tasha leans up to whisper a set of co-ordinates in his ear – a set of co-ordinates that he knows are a SHIELD sanctioned medical facility.

(Although he wasn’t actually informed of Coulson’s death until after the battle, so most of this was hindsight).

‘Tasha refuses to let him drive, so she drops him at the medical facility, and he terrifies a nurse with a simple bark of ‘Coulson?’, but he gets a room number. He bursts into the room to find Tyler with her head on the edge of the bed, not looking at him, but the hand with a knife in her fingertips states that if he’s a threat, he’s dead. She shifts her head and tired, red-rimmed, blood-shot eyes blink at him, and suddenly he has an armful of his distraught lover, her face buried in his neck and he’s looking over her head to the bed where Philip Coulson is lying, in critical condition, but definitely alive, and the fight that’s been in his body since Fury announced Phil’s death leaves him, and he’s clinging to Tyler, and they’re sobbing into each other’s shoulders and mouths and making impossible declarations to each other (‘Never die’, ‘Never gonna leave him alone again’, ‘Always gonna be with you’). Eventually, they’re cried out, and exhausted, emotionally and physically and Clint sinks into a chair, letting Tyler slump to the floor beside him and use his lap as a pillow, one of her arms wound around his knee, and her fingers digging almost painfully tight into his thigh. He strokes her hair until she falls asleep, both of them, with their fingers twinned together, and then together with Phil’s, a triad they’d formed long ago, and that they have no intention of letting Phil break.

They both fall asleep, but wake up the instant anyone enters the room, ready for another attack, ready to defend their lover, their _mate_. The staff keep trying to throw them out, but beyond them trading shifts every so often to get showers, or to bring the kids to visit, they don’t leave, and the staff eventually let them be. (Clint has a suspicion that Fury or ‘Tasha got involved seeing as he and Tyler were kind of likely to kill someone if they seriously tried to remove them).

(Their Mam is looking after the kids (and that really screwed with most peoples heads), with help from their Pa, and the other ‘siblings’ (especially Jake, Jake adored their children, completely and utterly), and SHIELD simply pulled Clint and Tyler off the duty roster until Phil was at the very least awake (Hill called to try and give them shit for that, Tyler hung up, and Clint appeared on the helicarrier in the middle of the night, with no obvious way of having got there, in Hill’s quarters, with a knife at the woman’s throat, needless to say, Hill didn’t try again)).

Phil finally woke up, two weeks after he’d been stabbed, to find Clint on one side of him, asleep in the chair, and Tyler sat on the other with Kaiden on her lap, and Amelia beside her, singing softly. He groaned slightly, and that was all it took for both of his lovers to be alert, focused on him, and doing their own checks, even after the medical teams assured them he was fine. Kaiden was held almost absently on Tyler’s hip, while Amelia had been grabbed by Clint to stop her clambering onto the bed and exacerbating ‘Daddy’s’ wounds. Tyler’s crying, and Clint will deny to his dying day that he’s not much better. Amelia doesn’t understand why two of her parents are crying when the third one’s finally woken up. Tyler eventually takes her hand, and bribes her away with the offer of ice-cream, and a look over her shoulder shows how little she actually wants to leave.

Once she’s gone, Clint’s knelt beside the bed, his face pressed to Phil’s hand, whispering apologies over, and over again, the same useless declarations he gave to Tyler slipping from his mouth. Phil pulls on his hand slightly, and curses when Clint misunderstands and let’s go, curling in on himself and continuing to whisper apologies.

“You’re an idiot you know that right?” Phil manages eventually, and gets a shocked look from Clint. “I can’t drag you up here, so you better get up here and kiss me before Tyler comes back and kicks both our asses for being obtuse.”

Clint was hesitant at first, but eventually, Phil managed to reassure him (as much as reassuring Clint was possible) that he didn’t blame him for anything.

When Tyler came back (without the kids), Clint was propped up beside Phil, one arm wrapped around him, the other hand folded with Phil’s in Phil’s lap. She smiles, and curls up in the chair on the opposite side, resting her head against the bed, and reaching out to wind her fingers through theirs.

*TSWBSID*

When Phil gets out of hospital, Clint and Tyler’s ‘parents’ insist that they relocate to their manor in Westchester for Phil’s recovery. It means that Tyler and Clint can be at his beck and call (or rather at their own psychic intuition that he’s trying to do something on his own that he still needs help with), and they’ve got help looking after the kids. Clint and Tyler are attentive, almost to a fault, but eventually, one of them gets called away, (their skill sets are unique enough that keeping them off roster for much longer is simply impossible).

During the time spent there, Tyler and Clint have one of their most impressive rows to date (which, considering how easily they rile each other up, was saying quite a lot). Phil overhears it, but isn’t actually a witness, although he gets the lowdown from Shane later.

“Why didn’t you call me?!” Clint’s screaming at her.

“Because no-one told me you’d been found!” Tyler roars back, her hands clenching reflexively, jaw tensed against tears. “No-one told me you were safe and yourself!”

“You should have found a way!”

“Well sorry if I was too busy praying outside an operating room and hoping like hell that I wasn’t about to lose one of the most important people in my life!”

“And Fury?! Surely he would’ve told me!”

“Because you’d have gone into battle knowing that Phil was in critical condition and I was terrifying nurses?!”

From there it generated into a fist fight, which predictably ended with Tyler nearly breaking Clint’s jaw, and Clint managing to wrench Tyler’s shoulder out again. Phil scolded them both when they appeared, bruises forming, but both looking calmer than they had since they’d got him out of the hospital. They look suitably chastised, but ended up seducing him to stop him from talking anymore, and he wonders whether either of them listened to a word he said.


End file.
